The company is offering its green Relationship Coffees in new 36-pound boxes for coffee roasters.
FROM STAFF REPORTS
Photos courtesy of Sustainable Harvest
Since 1997, specialty-coffee importing company Sustainable Harvest has aimed to improve the livelihoods of coffee-farming families around the world through its Relationship Coffee Model, which connects them to coffee roasters for transparent, lasting links.
Now roasters can get Sustainable Harvest-sourced coffees in a new way with the launch of the company’s e-commerce site. Offering green coffees from Sustainable Harvest’s producer partners packaged in 36-pound boxes, the site allows the company to reach more roasters, including its customer base of craft coffee roasters focused on smaller purchasing volumes.
In a press release announcing the new site, Sustainable Harvest explains: “The specialty coffee industry continues to evolve, with legacy roasting brands introducing electric variants, smart technology, and machines with lower capacity. Sustainable Harvest believes green coffee sourcing should also adapt to new technology and changing behaviors, and seeks to do that with the e-commerce platform.”
Creating the new site was an undertaking of several years, led by Sustainable Harvest’s trade and marketing teams. Now that it’s live, the site features Relationship Coffees carefully sourced and curated by Sustainable Harvest’s trade team, reflecting the company’s values grounded in full transparency. Coffees on the site are sustainably sourced, possess high quality with a cup score of 85+, and demonstrate the concept of Relationship Coffee in which buyers are able to establish relationships with each grower. The aforementioned 36-pound boxes are shipped straight from the warehouse to the customer’s door.
The press release continues, “New coffees—including fresh-crop offerings, certified coffees, and lots with experimental processes—will be added to the marketplace every two to three weeks. Additionally, coffees offered on the site will be available long-term so that roasters can order them year after year, reflecting Sustainable Harvest’s lasting relationships with growers. (The company’s average relationship with its partner producer organizations is 14 years.)”
Alfonso Carmona, chief marketing officer of Sustainable Harvest, says that in developing the site, the Sustainable Harvest team worked hard to understand roasters’ purchasing habits and green coffee needs through many conversations. They then used a human-centered design approach to craft a solution for roasters.
“We wanted to make it easy for anyone to buy green coffee online, and as a result, bring Relationship Coffees to more roasters across the U.S.,” says Alfonso. “The company has been around for more than 25 years, so it was a matter of delivering our experience, traceability systems, brand values, and Tastify quality control reports into a workable solution for coffee roasters everywhere.”
The new online marketplace is now live and offering Relationship Coffees to the specialty-coffee community. Customers can sign up here to receive notifications when new coffees are added to the site. Per the press release, “The new marketplace complements Sustainable Harvest’s traditional trading model, which it will continue to offer to its current customers with different needs and market demands.”
